How The Division Plans On Drawing Players Back, According To The Developer

Ubisoft wants to bring players back to The Division. There's a serious drop-off in the player base affecting Ubisoft's third-person MMO, and so they're attempting to expand on key elements in update 1.2 to draw players back into the game.

Gamespot quoted project coordinator Quentin Correggi from a recent live-stream where Correggi admitted that The Division doesn't have a lot of end-game content and they're working on fixing this to get players back into the game...

We created that beautiful world that players really enjoyed exploring during the levelling experience, but it's true that when you reach the end of the game, there is not much to do in the open world,

It's a rather telling thing when an MMO centered around open-world gameplay has the project coordinator admitting that there's not much to do in that open world.

The Division has been on the receiving end of a lot of hackers and glitches, but the biggest setback is the lack of content for those on the max level.

According to Gamespot, Ubisoft plans on addressing this issue by allowing those at level 30 to acquire more loot from challenges and bosses, as opposed to using The Division's crafting mechanic to get high tear gear.

To accommodate the new looting process, they've adjusted the Hard Mode bosses and Challenge Mode bosses to drop top tier gear, along with the level 30, 31 and 32 mobs to drop high-end gear in the Dark Zone.

And speaking of the Dark Zone... Ubisoft is implementing a radical and controversial new change to the Dark Zone loot extraction mechanic: you can now cut the rope.

For those of you who don't play The Division, the Dark Zone is a PvP, anything goes area. Players can get really, really good gear from out of the Dark Zone due to how dangerous it is. However, players must survive the PvP and the NPC mobs and get the loot to the helicopter extraction point in order to take home the goods they've recovered. This process includes attaching the loot to the helicopter as it preps for extraction and defending the loot (and yourself) until the extraction is complete.

By adding the ability to cut the rope on the loot, it means that players will have to keep a close eye on their loot box because a pesky player (even a fellow teammate) can cut the rope and steal the loot for themselves. It turns into a frantic game of trust if you're on a team, and it turns into a frantic game killing everything in sight if you're playing solo.

Some players are looking forward to this new change in The Division's Dark Zone, while others feel as if it will just make things unnecessarily difficult. We'll see how it plays out when update 1.2 drops.

Additionally, Ubisoft is adding more Search and Destroy missions for level 30 players, along with the new Incursion instance called Clear Sky.

The new Incursion will also have a Challenge Mode attached, but that won't go live until sometime shortly after the 1.2 update launches for The Division.

The Gamespot article rounds out by saying that the patch notes will be available starting Monday, on May 23rd and the update itself will go live on Tuesday, May 24th, for the Xbox One, PS4 and PC.